What is a Mastering Console?

What is a Mastering Console?

Crookwood makes 6 mastering consoles, to cover stereo or surround mastering for analogue, digital or both. However it's not widely understood what a mastering console should do: there aren't that many mastering consoles around, and they are specialist machines.

This guide gives you an overview of what a well designed mastering console can do, and the extra features you get with a Crookwood M series Mastering console.

A Brief History of Mastering

Crookwood consoles, controllers and routers were designed from the ground up to be the best for mastering and precision monitoring. Obviously sonic quality is paramount, but actually, day to day, other things have more impact on the quality of your work, and the profitability of your studio.

The original mastering consoles were just that, a console.  They had monitor and record facilities (called “Transfer” facilities, rather than record, because you transferred one media to another, via processors if required), but they also had inbuilt eq’s and compressors like a traditional recording console. Because they were dedicated devices they were very efficient to use.

Time moved on, and with the advent of DAWs, these traditional consoles became less relevant. Instead a lot of engineers use a variety of outboard gear, both digital and analogue selected by personal preference, together with some sort of patch to chain them together, and some sort of monitor controller to adjust the speaker volume. In addition there are a variety of legacy “tape” machines around, CDs, 1630s, DATs, Masterlinks, ½”, vinyl lathes etc.

Other engineers work almost exclusively in the box, using plug ins and perhaps a dedicated analogue chain, and a monitor controller. Apart from the DAW, there may be no other machine in the room, all data being passed by files.

Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of kit designed for mastering, so everybody tends to use equipment made for the wider market, on a “it will do” basis.

We design consoles, controllers and routers to glue together all of these discrete elements of a studio so they work as one ergonomic unit, sonically pure and very efficient, like a console of old, a true production machine. All Crookwood products are designed to be very quick to use, allow you to easily experiment with different chains, and to comprehensively diagnose audio issues.  This catalyses your creativity, and helps you push the work through on time.
So mastering console, router or controller, we’ve got the product for you.

What does a Modern Mastering Console do?

So today, there are 2 main functions that a console performs:

Monitoring

The console should let you listen to your work, check it for coherence, and also let you listen to various points in the record path so you can make quality and processing judgements

Recording (Transfer in mastering speak)

The console should let you select a source to send to a record path, so you can process the signal. It may also allow you to insert pieces of outboard in series.

What does a Crookwood Mastering Console do?

Our M class range of consoles add a lot more functionality to this basic console, so you can do your job faster, better and with complete audio confidence.
The integration and facilities we offer means our mastering consoles become the centre of your studio, bringing everything together, working as one cohesive machine to let you work at your best.

A few details -

Monitoring

This is the heart of a console.  Without excellent monitoring, you can never really hear what the source and your revisions sound like. And if you can't hear properly, your work is compromised, and you'll make mistakes.

• Our monitors are extremely accurate, with usually just one active stage between the source and the loudspeakers. Remaining fully balanced throughout, they are extremely accurate and pure.  The sound is accurate, not warm, euphonic, coloured or masked, so you know what everything sounds like, warts and all!
• The level accuracy is also world beating.  Small differences in level can fool our ears so easily into thinking something is better, when in fact, it's just louder!  The consoles  have fine 1dB level volume steps, plus you can trim any source to any other with 0.25dB steps to eradicate level differences during A/B compares. We also have speaker calibration so you can calibrate your room to known international standards for complete confidence.
• We have the widest range of monitor check functions available to verify the sound, and spot problems that will cause problems on the various formats you have to produce.  Not just a mono button, but between 4 and 13 different checks, model dependant.
• We have full surround capabilities to 7.1 , with foldown checks, speaker calibration, and instant flipping between stereo and surround for fast production of multiformat work.
• We offer full bass management and subwoofer integration for surround and stereo, working with mono or stereo subs in conjunction with your main speakers: not just a few dodgy filters, but accurate calibrated level and frequency for mains and subs to integrate perfectly.
• We work with digital or analogue sources, transparently trimming and moving between them with ease, automatically engaging converters to suit. In some models you can choose a specific converter from a pool of converters, use our excellent internal converters, or your preferred outboard ones.
• Obviously we offer proper external meter outputs, but in digital as well for digital meters, and we can also drive digital speakers directly with our digital monitor output.
• Finally we have a large range of monitor sources, so you can connect all of your legacy gear, as well as multiple DAWs, or outputs within a DAW so you can really monitor your ITB signal flow.

Remember, these are options: your console can be as simple or as complex as you wish. But it illustrates that its not an average monitor controller hey?

Transfer

We make the recording path easy.

• Easily select the source, then instantly engage the outboard you need into the path, in the order you want, be it analogue or digital. No audio compromises, but fast, efficient and pure. If you have lots of outboard, this allow you to choose the most relevant pieces for the job in hand, and make changes in the path at the flick of a switch. Because its quick, you can now experiment and learn, rather than stick to the same processing because of time constraints.
• Our system automatically inserts converters to move between digital and analogue, and automatically buffers the outputs so you can dub and record back to the DAW at the same time.
• We recognise that different folk work in different ways, so we offer just analogue, just digital or both record paths, to suit your needs.
• We also offer analogue level controls, placed where you require, and analogue MS processing.  Oh and parallel analogue processing with blending.

All together now

You can buy these parts separately, but put together they offer an integrated well thought our console, a real bonus to your everyday sound quality and productivity.

Think Mastering? Think Crookwood!